Feral Children

The conversations I have had with my husband in recent days have been quite comical. I have felt the need to specifically request for him to do certain things while I am away. It isn’t that I think he can’t handle it – I know he can – but we parent a bit differently and I don’t want our kids to feel like something in missing in my absence.

Some requests I have made this week:

“Please feed the cats”. It sounds like a no brainer but my husband hates them more than I do and I wouldn’t be surprised if one or more were no longer with us when I return.

“Please put Em’s hair in a high pony”. I don’t want to come home to a girl that has a permanent kink in her neck from craning to see out from under her hair.

“I don’t care what this place looks like from now until 11 on Saturday night but it would really be best for everyone if when I get home the kitchen is clean, laundry is done and the toys are put away”. Enough said.

“Encourage the babies to use words when they want something. I really don’t want to return to home full of children that grunt, groan, whine and cry instead of using language to communicate”.

“Eat all of the gluten in the house. Eat as many gluten filled meals as you can think of and just get it out of our house”. I am actually pretty tired of cleaning the kitchen not just 3 times a day but sometimes 2 additional times so that I can have a safe meal.

Am I going to come home to a house full of feral children? Will they be running around in dirty diaper shirts, unwashed faces, full diapers, no capability to use words to communicate with jam covered hair and sticky fingers?? Probably not. A few non-essential things may get missed while I am away but overall they will have a great time with their dad. Probably a better time than with me as the rules will be relaxed and he is more brave in taking them out to do things. He did say he might just cut open a bag of cheerios and put it on the floor for them to graze off of. And every time I reminded him to do something his response was one word: Feral.